


Bookmark

by spiralmaiden



Category: No. 6 (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-Relationship, domesticity porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-12-03 05:29:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiralmaiden/pseuds/spiralmaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So they never lose their place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bookmark

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the fact that the love of my life buys me beautiful bookmarks all the time and I’m still using a folded receipt to hold my place in the book I’m reading right now. Anime-based. Quote at the end is from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “To The Not Impossible Him.”

_Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell._

_-[Edna St. Vincent Millay](http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/edna_st_vincent_millay.html)_

 

It was a fact that Nezumi kept a home filled with many wonderful books. It was also, curiously enough, a fact that he wasn't really in the habit of using anything proper to mark his place amongst the pages. He never dog-earred them (they were too fragile for that) or left them propped open (that damaged the spines) but, more often than not, Shion would open one and some scrap or snipping would swirl to the ground like maple seeds and the reading place would be immediately lost. Newspaper shreds, old receipts, webbed magazine pages, crumbling envelopes, pieces of string, sometimes even smaller, thinner books—all these things were entombed in the volumes until they were cracked open in Shion’s march through the library.  It began to gnaw at him a little.

One particularly cold day, after helping Inukashi see to it that all the animals were properly watered and fed despite the inclement weather (resulting in most of the morning being spent breaking ice from bowls), Shion settled himself in a spot on the floor and got to work while the mice looked on. Nezumi was curled up nearby with a book and relishing the silence, so he didn’t bother asking what he could possibly be up to. An occupied Shion was a Shion that was not getting into trouble. This project absorbed him the entire rest of the day, so when Nezumi’s stomach finally rumbled, only then did he realize it was about dinner time. He was in the middle of a line so he started to get up slowly, only to be interrupted anyway by a handful of  _something_ being waved in his face. He resumed the slow raising of his head, more annoyed than hungry now, and found Shion looking far too pleased with whatever-it-was he was holding.

“Nezumi, look,” said Shion after nothing was said for a few moments. “They’re bookmarks!” He waggled them again, even more enthusiastically. There were ten of them altogether, made out of papercraft that he and Safu had learned from her grandmother when he was much, much younger. He couldn’t exactly remember how to do it at first, so the first one had been taken apart and remade, but the rest were perfect (by his standards at least). He’d embellished them with any number of things: burlap threads, faded ribbon, a button from a shirt, a dried flower he’d found. Each one was unique in its own way.

Nezumi gave him a dubious look. “That’s what you spent all day on? What, scraps of paper aren’t good enough markers for his highness?”

“Don’t be like that,” said Shion. “I made these for you. They’re heavier so they’ll keep places better, and they’re long so they’ll actually stick out of most books, but they’re thin enough that they won’t be lumps in the pages. They’re perfect!”

“Heh. I don’t really need them, you know. It’s not like I don’t already know all of them inside-out and backward.” Nezumi waved a hand, the gesture encompassing the entire collection.

“Well I don’t,” said Shion with a smile that would book no argument. He stuck one in the tome still sitting open in Nezumi’s lap. “We’ll use these, okay? So we’ll never lose our place.”

And that was that.

Except, by sheer chance (or perhaps through petulance), Nezumi _did_ develop a habit of  _losing_ the bookmarks. Shion found himself having to scramble to find one when he was doing his own reading, and before long, he had to make more. He started squirreling away odds-and-ends from all over to decorate them with, and they somehow became bizarre collages of their lives, scattered throughout the shelves of their home.

That is, until the last days of winter brought all of that to an end.

   
***

   
Spring found Nezumi gathering the few meager things he would need with him as he left everything behind. 

For now, at least.

As he moved toward the door, a stack of books near his feet shifted. Against his better judgement, he knelt back down, picking them up and re-stacking them slowly, making sure they wouldn’t fall over while he as gone. He knew it was a mistake. Their weight felt right in his hands. Like so many other things …

Like so many other things he couldn’t take with him.

He found himself unable to resist opening the top one, and it neatly fell open to the last page that had been perused, thanks to one of Shion’s bookmarks. It was one Nezumi was positive was adorned with a button from one of Shion’s shirts. It rested next to a line of poetry that caught his eye:

   
 _…Now it may be, the flower for me / Is this beneath my nose: / How shall I tell, unless I smell / The Carthaginian rose?_

  
He felt the edges of his mouth twitch as he snapped it shut. He would not be taking the book with him. Too heavy, too impractical, not something easily traveled with. The bookmark, however, found its way into his pocket as a reminder:

That he would never lose his place.


End file.
